The List: Conspiracy Theory and Delusions

This is in continuation of my previous post. The first theory that I developed and discussed can be considered ‘rational’. How I came from first theory to the second one that I am going to describe is unclear even to me. I came upon the second theory gradually in 2005. The thing that I was kept in dark about the PMA incident for 8 years meant a lot to me. I knew many people around me knew about it and kept quiet. If I never knew about it, even than I would have developed some sorts of delusions. It was in between my grandfather’s suicide and 2 deaths in PAF Academy. It accelerated the delusional thinking. I think the disease ‘schizophrenia’ was in my genes. I always used to think differently and fantasize a lot about the future.

First of all, I believed that our family in general and my grandfather in particular, whom I considered as Second Coming of Jesus Christ (PBUH), was under some sort of surveillance. Both of my grandfathers were veteran of WW II and served in same unit. They were in Indian Observer’s Corps that was disbanded after the war. Then there were date of births within the family. My father has 4 July which is American Independence Day. My mother has unofficial 14 August but it was 27 Rajab which is an important date from Islamic point of view. I have 6 September which is Defense Day of Pakistan. Two of my brothers have 14 February (1 day off to Valentine’s Day) and 2 July. One of my sisters has 2 January (1 day off to New Year day). Two of my cousins have 25 December (Christmas) and 22 March (1 day off to Pakistan Day).

I started thinking in terms of good and evil forces. I visualized that there were good and bad people in every religion. The bad people are closely knitted among themselves. They would support themselves in every possible way. They not only recognize themselves but also the good people. They are only sincere to their own community. They may fight among themselves but behind the scenes they cooperate with each other. They exploit the good people for their own advantage. I imagined that the names were one of the ways to differentiate them. They determine from the very beginning whether the child would be brought up as good or bad using the names. After all they need good and honest people for working. They share secrets and information among themselves and spy on good people. They are also closely knitted across all religions. In later part of my delusional thinking I replaced the bad people with the Jews somehow. If people can come up the idea that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy, then I can also come up with this far fetched idea. I imagined that there are Jews in every religion especially among Christians and Muslims. In my second psychotic phase in 2009 I replaced bad people with some sort of bad angels!

I considered that my grandfather came to know the tactics of bad people someway. I thought he could differentiate among the good and bad people with the help of their names and talking to them. He was very particular on naming the children himself or through his friends. This way he identified good people/names. Through his efforts, that are unclear to me, good people became to get connected loosely especially in Army and began to identify bad people. One of his sons (my uncle) retired as Lt Col. Three of his grandsons are still serving as officers in Pakistan Army.

As a result, bad people became cautious. They could not support themselves openly. The bad people, especially in lower/poor class, became frustrated as they were not getting enough support from their counterparts in upper/elite class. This created some sort of split between them. India recruited such people and I thought that SM Farman was one of them. When he became absent from PMA Kakul, the bad people immediately recognized that one man of their community had played a double game. The passing out parade tactics was just a pretext. He must have listed bad people having bad potential.

The main delusion that I developed due to this incident was something like that. I visualized that the list remained in knowledge of some high ranking officers in Army and kept a closely guarded secret. Over the years, they might have ascertained its credibility and extended it. I thought that on one ‘D-Day’ the bad people might be shown the door. This might lead to some sort of civil war in Pakistan and might be a prelude to Armageddon. I believed that the many world intelligence agencies especially American were in knowledge of the incident and keeping a close watch on the developments. On the other side I came close to declaring myself the Beast. The Beast is a major sign of Last Hour according to a saying of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and is mentioned even in Holy Quran. I thought that by means of the list I had differentiated between true believers and non believers. I must clarify that the ‘list’ is not an invention of my mind. I heard of it from a fellow officer and started giving deep thoughts to it. I think people from both communities know that some sort of list exists and are behaving in a way as nothing of such sort happened. For some it should not make any difference. Any way it has exposed something very big and important. It is my firm belief that in the end the forces of truth and justice, irrespective of religion, would triumph.

In my second psychotic phase in 2009 I started looking at the incident through different dimensions. I though SM Farman singled out me from the start due to my name and past family history. The battle of ‘Badar’ is the first battle Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) fought against the non believers and prevailed. He anticipated that it would create a religious fervor. I thought there were quite less officers with good potential as compared to bad one in his list. I thought that seeds of split among bad people were in Indian Partition someway. In about 1990, Pakistan handed over a list of Sikh separatist leaders to India. There are a sizable Sikh people in Indian Army. The aim was not to help India. The hidden aim was to create some sort of instability in India. India effectively put the list in bin. I thought that the PMA episode was some sort of response to that. There were two cadets who stood outside the passing out parade. SM Farman must have realized that some sort of tug of war was going on within Army in smaller scale. He wanted to accelerate it exponentially. He picked two cadets, one from each group, for the occasion and subsequently defected to India. He anticipated that, with time, both groups would rally around their ‘leaders’ and fight. The structure and working of Army had made it unlikely. Fighting an all out war with Pakistan was never on Indian agenda. If I would not have been selected he would have picked someone else. While my career in Army never really took off somehow, I can speculate that the other ‘cadet’ must have been enjoying a smooth career progress.

Then there might be much bigger perspective to all that. I never had a feeble belief of thinking myself to be Imam Mahdi. But psychiatrists chose to write that I had such an ‘unshakeable belief’. By all accounts the defection of SM Farman from PMA to India was a big event. While Muslims think that Jesus Christ (PBUH) will assist Imam Mahdi in his Second Coming, many Christians think that Imam Mahdi will be anti-Christ. I visualized that I might be labeled as anti-Christ in future!